Daoist Philosophy and Stephen Mitchell’s The Frog Prince: A Fairy Tale for Consenting Adults

In 1999, Stephen Mitchell published The Frog Prince: A Fairy Tale for Consenting Adults, in which he added “a good deal of background materials” and “a certain number of necessary explanations” to the “six-and-a-half-minute” world-famous Grimms’ fairy tale The Frog Prince, making it a psychological and philosophical novella. This paper illustrates how Daoist philosophy is entailed in Stephen Mitchell’s Frog Prince by analyzing the protagonists’ practice of Daoist philosophy: the Princess’s pursuit of a Daoist natural, simple and carefree life; the Frog’s transformation from an ugly frog to a handsome prince by practicing meditation; and the King’s love of Daoism, and governance of both his kingdom and his royal family in accordance with Daoist philosophy. The authors argue that Stephen Mitchell is not simply expanding and deepening the fairy tale by adding Daoist elements, he is also expounding the Daoist philosophy by means of a fairy tale.